


synapse

by jiunnie



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Drinking, Drinking & Talking, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Kissing, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, Nightmares, mino misses taehyun, taehyun misses mino, why the fuck is winner in japan, winner on hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 20:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7329127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiunnie/pseuds/jiunnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>winner’s on hiatus, but mino and taehyun are both busier than they know how to deal with.<br/>(the one where namsong just really miss each other)</p>
            </blockquote>





	synapse

**Author's Note:**

> \- [this](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/62/f8/b1/62f8b1777a32f2a04ca36e5a5c9d5540.jpg) amazing picture started it all  
> \- for emman my lovely bf; i miss you so much sorry ive been gone ily;;

The darkness has teeth like a dozen tiny sirens, all screaming. _Cut, cut--_  
  
Taehyun jolts awake, heart racing. Turns out it isn’t dark after all--he’d fallen asleep with the lights on. He really should have enough of bright fluorescents by now. And the heat of it all too; he can’t seem to ever get rid of it, even after wrapping up filming for the day, always having to walk towards the van with the feeling of lighting kits heating up his back. Or tungsten. Maybe they’re tungsten, that would explain the heat.    
He doesn’t particularly care. It’s just so fucking hot all the time.

Even now, with his heartbeat still abnormally fast, his eyes squeezed shut and ears ringing, the thing that bothers him most is the way his shirt is sticking to him, glued snug by the trail of dampness running down his back.  
  
“Coming,” he growls, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting up. He presses the phone against his ear; it’s warm from overnight charging.  
  
“Yeah,” he says into the receiver, short.  
  
“Hey.” A pause, and then he hears the sound of an exhale rustle against his ear. He can almost feel Mino’s breath on his neck.  
  
“I’m sleeping,” Taehyun says, but not as sharply as he wants to. He closes his eyes. Exhaustion tickles the back of his eyelids.  
  
“I--do you wanna hang. I mean, are you free to,” Mino mumbles.  
  
Taehyun detaches the phone from his ear to check the time.  
  
“It’s almost three,” he intones. There's a moment of confusion on the other end, like something's fumbling.  
  
“Hello?” Taehyun says, louder than before. “Mino?”  
  
“--Hey.” Mino gasps, out of breath. “Sorry I tripped, dropped my phone.”  
  
There’s almost something unnerving about his voice but Taehyun isn’t sure if it’s just his own brain tripping up, busy counting down to when he’ll have to be up again.  
  
“Where you at, now?”  
  
Mino’s reply comes a beat too quick-- _you know the place_ \--and Taehyun brushes aside the twinge of annoyance that arises. He really should have known better than to ask where Mino would choose to spend a night outside.  
  
“I'll be there soon.” He says, mechanically; he’s really just too exhausted to make any sense of his own actions right now. Making to hang up, he quickly lifts the phone to his ear again.  
  
‘Hey.”  
  
“Yeah?” Mino says, laughing, like he’s been waiting for Taehyun to say something. Somehow, annoyance pricks at Taehyun’s scalp, but in such a deadbeat way that he’s not fired up enough for it to show in his voice.  
  
“Don’t... do anything stupid.”  
  
So Taehyun speaks lightly instead, the ghost of a smile at the edge of his lips, and it’s only between them that they know he’s being perfectly serious.

  * -



Taehyun spots Mino a distance from the back, a lone figure in white standing out against the night. The gold chain he (probably) donned earlier to film glistens under the harshness of the street lights, swinging in time to a similarly ridiculous silver chain hanging from his belt loops. A sudden desire to burst out laughing seizes Taehyun.  
  
That is, until he realises just how drunk Mino is. He’s walking in a strange way, feet spending an unnaturally long time on the ground with each step, almost as if the ground is working some invisible force on his soles. Apparently, it’s also the same force that’s binding Mino’s fist tight to the bottle in his grip.  
  
“You’re being too obvious,” Taehyun growls, jogging to catch up, grimacing a beat too late at his admonishing tone. “You could at least have stayed in the shadows, I don’t know--"   
  
Something thrust into his chest shuts him up momentarily. The bottle.  
  
“Drink.”  
  
Taehyun blinks, slowing down to match Mino’s pace.  
  
“Drink,” Mino says again, and Taehyun’s _I’m working in three hour_ s catches in his throat as Mino grabs his chin and maneuvers him so they’re almost facing each other, the bottle tilted against his mouth.  
  
The heavy glass hits his teeth through his bottom lip and he’s forced to swallow; it’s a whole mouthful. The soju bites as it goes down. He feels Mino’s fingernails dig into his skin, right at the dip in his neck where the choker he has on from last night suddenly feels too tight.  
  
“Fuck you,” he snaps, wiping his mouth as he pushes Mino away. Mino stumbles.  
  
“So don’t make me force you,” Mino says, catching his footing with surprising ease. “And drink with me.”  
  
He stops dragging his feet along the pavement, coming to a halt, and Taehyun stops with him. There’s a moment of quietness as Mino looks off into the distance, his gaze unfocused. Taehyun has no idea what the fuck they're doing.  
  
Yet, he finds himself staring at Mino, only to break it by coughing as he abandons trying to swallow the bitter taste off his tongue. He reaches out and wrenches the bottle free from Mino’s hand.

  
“Then let’s get something better, idiot.”

  * -



They head to a nondescript food stall lit by sparse bulbs and manned by a yawning middle-aged lady with greying hair. Taehyun isn’t sure if the shrug she gives as they sit is for the rogue night breeze or an acknowledgement of their entering.  
  
Deftly, he prys the lid off the bottle and pours himself a shot, ignoring Mino who is tilting his head in his direction. And doing something weird with his face akin to a pout.  
  
“You’re way too far ahead of me in drunkenness right now. Give me some time to catch up.”  
  
Mino promptly ignores him and simply makes a grab for the bottle, muttering, “Respect your elders, kid.”

  * -



If he strains hard enough, Taehyun is able to recall the last time that silence between the two of them stretched into nothing but a battle of awkward fidgets and controlled, uneasy breathing.  
  
Now, thankfully, isn’t one of those times.  
  
They haven’t said much since they started, downing their drinks to the sound of shot glasses shuffling across the worn plastic tabletop and a few exchanges of _-you okay?_ , but Taehyun is fine with that. At this point, he’s not sure if alcohol’s the thing keeping him awake or what's tugging his eyelids shut, but a sideways glance at Mino’s profile, dark and sharp against the hanging bulb, is enough to keep him seated.    
  
He presses the top of his lip against the top of his latest drink, swallowing hard. Condensation tickles his chin. He wonders what time it is.  
  
Trying to discern if the blip in the black of the sky means dawn is approaching, Taehyun narrows his eyes to stare into the distance, only to find a sudden weight on his shoulder; he doesn’t need to look to know it’s Mino, leaning lightly. The sensation socks him in the gut, foreign yet familiar. It’s strange--they go months seeing more of each other on screens than in real life, and suddenly they’re back to this, back to standing at the precipice between starving and suffocating in each other.  
  
Somehow, Taehyun knows to keep the silence.  
  
The stillness that follows has a strange quality about it, the kind of strange lull where you can kind of hear your heart beating too loudly. Taehyun sits and ponders on that, his brain humming suitably. He must be drunker than he thought.  
  
“I really, really,” Mino says, slowly. “Really just… want to fall asleep.”  
  
Taehyun hears the way he drags out the words and feels his heart ache, a slow, dull breaking.  
  
“Sleep,” he commands, voice flat, but they both recognise it for what it is. Taehyun lets a small sigh escape as he exhales, heat flushing his face and pooling wet and stuffy in his eyes. He’s not giving encouragement, just what Mino needs.  
  
It’s permission.  
  
So Mino does, quietly closing the distance between Taehyun’s neck and the side of his head in one tiny swoop as he shuts his eyes. Taehyun blinks as he feels Mino swallow thickly, the tiny action sending ripples along the surface of their skins that’s pressed together.  
  
Mino doesn’t release the tension in his muscles, but his breathing starts to even out a little. Taehyun wonders what he’s thinking about under those eyelids. Against his neck, Mino’s hair is beginning to scratch at him.  
  
Slowly, he shifts under Mino’s weight, turning so Mino comes up against his chest. Lightly, so that it only ghosts Mino’s skin, he bends to kiss the top of Mino’s head. Mino freezes.  
  
“I think our drink is getting warm,” Taehyun whispers.

  
* *

Unexpectedly, the chain is really starting to get to him. Mino fumbles at the back of his neck where the necklace clasps shut, but even through the heaviness clouding his head he knows to leave it on. Sure it’s some godforsaken hour of the night, but it's also true that his outfit isn’t complete without it. (He very briefly considers the aesthetic of hanging it from his belt loops.)  
  
Instead, to distract himself, he turns on Taehyun. It hasn’t yet dawned on him how bizarre it is to have Taehyun within touching distance, so close that Mino can lose himself in the idiosyncrasies of when Taehyun gets too sleepy and too drunk: the way he blinks slow; the tiny, sporadic moistening of his lips with his tongue; how he almost seems to be sighing with his shoulders, slouched low over the table and chin cupped in his hands. Mino wonders how long it’s been since Taehyun slept for real.  
  
“Stop acting so much,” he demands, frowning. His indignance is only half-faked.  
  
Taehyun returns his frown.  
  
“Stop hanging out with rappers so much then,” he retorts. His tone is almost cool, but Mino is staring at the way Taehyun has his cheeks puffed out and is roughly pushing his fringe away from his face, eyes suddenly blinking hard and fast.  
  
Taehyun... is actually upset.  
  
“I’ve missed you,” Mino realises in a mumble. He imagines the words getting lost in the dark, and tries chasing after them--“So fucking much. You have no idea.”  
  
“Fuck this,” Taehyun grits out, and grabs Mino so abruptly Mino gives a tiny yelp. They’re inches from each other’s faces.  
  
“Missed you more,” Taehyun breathes, and the lump in Mino’s throat doesn’t get to anything more because Taehyun’s gripping the sides of Mino’s face and kissing, just kissing him hard.  
  
Just like that, everything Mino wants to say dies at the back of his throat (where the lump knots the tightest), and he finds himself stumbling into silence. The kind where the gears in his head aren’t exactly coming to a halt. Just turning slower and slower, and the only thing he knows--as he lets go and allows his eyes to flutter to a close--is this:  
  
It’s a synapse. A tiny pause. A space, but not quite as empty.  
  
A rest, of sorts, but also a nudge in the right direction, a sign telling him it’s okay, that it’s going to be okay. That’s what Taehyun is to him, what sneaking out to meet Taehyun is, what kissing Taehyun is; the night hot and sticky on their skin, their fingers numb from ice-cold bottles.  
  
So Mino kisses Taehyun back. Takes back in seconds what has been stolen from them, from _him_. The months and nights spent working, doing nothing but gritting his teeth as yearning sits sore and heavy in his gut, waiting to tear him apart. Dying to bury his head in Taehyun’s shoulder after every performance alone, just to feel Taehyun’s arms around him and know that he’s not screwing up.  
  
Now, Taehyun is soft and small against him, and Mino smiles as he nicks Taehyun’s lip. For someone who creates clever rhymes for a living, he can’t quite believe the only words he’s capable of producing. _Missed you most. Most-est._


End file.
